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Version: 0.13.0

Roadmap

This page outlines the development phases of Snakeway, from initial foundation through the 1.0 release and beyond. Each phase has a defined set of goals and deliverables. Completed items are marked with checkboxes.

Phase 0: Foundation (v0.1.0)​

Goals

  • Create a functional binary (snakeway)
  • Implement a minimal config format (TOML)
  • Integrate Pingora with downstream and upstream HTTP/1.1 + HTTP/2
  • Implement basic reverse proxy routing for a single upstream
  • Implement basic device API
  • Structured logging via the tracing framework
  • CI and cross-compilation

Deliverables

  • GitHub repository with a working MVP
  • GitHub Actions CI pipeline
  • Example configurations
  • Linux release binaries

Phase 1: Foundations and Extensibility (v0.2.x)​

Goals

  • Define the Snakeway Device API (builtin Rust devices and WASM devices)
  • Add hot reload support (snakeway reload and SIGHUP)
  • Add static file serving with caching, compression, and range requests
  • Implement the Identity device

Deliverables

  • Complete device API with lifecycle hooks
  • WASM device loading via Wasmtime
  • Static file server with ETag, If-Modified-Since, gzip, brotli, and range request support
  • Hot reload via signal and CLI command

Phase 1.5: Benchmark and Architecture Review​

Confirm that the architecture is sound before building on top of it.

  • Begin benchmark suite
  • Evaluate performance bottlenecks
  • Review error handling in the device lifecycle

Phase 2: Load Balancing and Observability (v0.3.x, v0.4.x)​

Goals

  • Load balancing with multiple strategies (round-robin, least-connections, randomized)
  • Passive health checks and circuit breaking
  • Observability via admin API endpoints
  • Multiple upstream support with ordered failover
  • Downstream and upstream TLS
  • WebSocket and gRPC proxy support

Deliverables

  • Upstream pool manager with health-check worker loop
  • Circuit breaker with configurable thresholds
  • Admin API: /admin/health, /admin/upstreams, /admin/stats, /admin/reload

Phase 2.5: Outstanding Tasks (v0.5.x)​

Traffic Management

  • Weighted load balancing strategy
  • Config-defined weights for A/B testing

Configuration

  • Audit validation coverage across all config sections
  • Cross-field and reload safety rules
  • Config observability improvements (config dump formatting)

Architecture

  • Review ownership, lifetimes, and error model
  • Define explicit device ordering mechanism
  • ALPN policy for downstream and upstream protocol negotiation
  • Refactor HttpProxy to focused components

Routing

  • Evaluate and document path matching precedence rules

Phase 3: Security and Path Control (v0.6.x)​

Goals

  • Request normalization (path collapse, UTF-8 enforcement, query canonicalization)
  • CIDR-based network policies (allow/deny)
  • Method and header allowlists
  • Request size limits and rate limiting

Deliverables

  • L4 connection rate limiting filter
  • L4 network connection filter (CIDR)
  • L7 request rate limiting device
  • L7 network policy device
  • Request filter device (methods, headers, body size)

Phase 3.1: Refinements (v0.7.x)​

  • Standardize CLI format options between config dump and config check
  • Add config init command for first-proxy configuration generation
  • Rename devices.d to device.d for consistency
  • Separate remaining shared runtime/spec configuration state
  • Make MAX_USER_AGENT_LENGTH and MAX_X_FORWARDED_FOR_LENGTH configurable

Phase 3.2: Refinements (v0.8.x)​

  • Add work_stealing toggle to server configuration

Phase 4: ACME TLS Automation (v0.9.0)​

Goals

  • Automated TLS certificate issuance via ACME (HTTP-01 challenge)
  • Automatic certificate renewal
  • Host-based route matching
  • /admin/certs endpoint for certificate inspection
  • route solve CLI command for debugging route matching
  • Review configuration lowering logic for safety

Phase 5: Hardening (v0.10.0)​

All core features are implemented at this stage. The focus shifts to architecture review, test coverage, and operational polish.

Goals

  • Clean, forward-looking architecture
  • Production-grade test suite (150+ integration tests)
  • OpenTelemetry support
    • OTLP export (traces, logs, metrics)
    • W3C Trace Context propagation
    • Configurable sampling (parent-based with trace-ID ratio)
    • Per-phase child spans (routing, upstream selection, upstream request/response, response)
    • Metrics instrumentation (request throughput, latency, errors, upstream health, circuit breaker)

Configuration

  • Consider moving validation logic into spec files where appropriate
  • Evaluate env var / CLI / config parity - current split is intentional (env vars for logging/ops, HCL for app behavior, CLI for paths)
  • Require pre-provisioned ACME cert_dir and data_dir (stop auto-creating directories) - matches certbot behavior
  • Lazy DNS resolution for hosts (compatible with container environments)

Devices

  • Make UA Parser regex file overridable in the config (similar to MMDB files)
  • Review device subsystem against the mature configuration subsystem
  • Consider discrete on_response_header and on_response_body - implemented on_stream_response_body instead.
  • Consider scoping network policy, request filter, and rate limiting devices to specific paths

Routing

  • Review routing code for conceptual duplication: reviewed, no changes needed; structural parallelism between Static/Service routes is intentional
  • Implement more robust path matching

Phase 6: Packaging and Distribution (v0.11.0)​

Goals

  • .deb and .rpm packages
  • Systemd service unit
  • Distroless Docker images

Deliverables

Standard installation layout:

/etc/snakeway/snakeway.hcl
/etc/snakeway/ingress.d/*.hcl
/etc/snakeway/device.d/*.hcl

Phase 7: Reconsidered Late Additions (v0.12.0)​

Goals

  • Zero-drop reload support for seamless configuration changes under load.
  • Admin API authentication (bearer-token scheme, required on every bind_admin).
  • Make a config directory configurable with an environment variable and use it in packaging.
    • This solves an ergonomics issue where an operator has to specify the non-default values at the CLI per environment when troubleshooting a setup (which is annoying).

Phase 8: Alpha Hardening and Refinements (v0.13.0)​

Goals

  • Move config validation primitives to discrete crate.
  • Rework config validation report collection to avoid a monolithic file that lists all possible issues.
  • Add sensible defaults and env vars after walking through real world deployment scenarios.

Phase 9: Snakeway 1.0​

Goals

  • Comprehensive documentation site
  • Full operator manual
  • Benchmark suite with published results
  • Stabilized device API

Post-1.0​

The following items are not in the critical path for 1.0 but represent the longer-term direction.

Router Performance​

LRU cache in front of the router to make route lookups O(1) instead of O(n).

Caching Device​

HTTP response caching using Pingora's native cache subsystem with pluggable storage (memory, disk, Redis, or custom backends).

Use Pingora Native HTTP Cache.

Rough draft of approach:

  1. identity
  2. rate_limit
  3. OTHER_DEVICES
  4. cache_lookup ← early device
  5. origin call
  6. cache_store ← response device
  7. logging

Pluggable storage (supported by Pingora):

  1. memory (LRU)
  2. memory + disk
  3. Redis
  4. custom storage

Full WASM Device Support​

  • Pre-instantiated components (no per-request instantiation)
  • Bounded store pool with memory and execution limits
  • Wasmtime caching and pooling allocator
  • Per-hook timeouts and fail-open/fail-closed configuration
  • Header and path mutation guardrails
  • Plugin versioning and reload validation

Active Health Checks​

Background probe model (HTTP/TCP) independent of request traffic. Passive health checks already exist.

Additional Certificate Management​

  • PostgreSQL and/or S3 certificate stores
  • DNS-01 ACME challenge support

Kubernetes Ingress Controller​

Optional feature that allows Snakeway to function as a Kubernetes ingress controller, polling for configuration changes and applying runtime snapshots through the existing configuration pipeline.

Static File Server Enhancements​

  • Precompressed asset serving (.br, .gz)
  • Zero-copy serving via sendfile
  • WASM hooks for static file requests
  • Per-file caching headers

External Control Planes and Discovery​

  • Dynamic certificate management
  • Service discovery via DNS A/AAAA with TTL, SRV records, plugin-based discovery, and file-based watchers

Admissions Control​

Standalone backpressure monitoring tool that integrates with the proxy for graceful load shedding.

Packaging​

  • Helm chart